As the official toll in the listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak rose to 13 dead and 72 sick in 18 states, a major retailer said cantaloupe growers need to do more to prevent outbreaks of foodborne disease.

“I don’t think the cantaloupe industry can continue on doing the very same thing and expecting a different result,” said Craig Wilson, the head of food safety for Costco, the Seattle-based warehouse retailer, which is regarded as a leader in requiring food safety measures from its suppliers. “It’s time for companies to get more aggressive. If they know this is going to happen, let’s step up and not let it happen.”

William Neuman of the New York Times reports federal officials on Tuesday that there had been at least 19 previous outbreaks involving more than 1,000 illnesses and three deaths resulting from cantaloupe consumption since 1984. We count at least 36 outbreaks.

Wilson further said Costco would consider setting standards for how melons are grown and how they are cleaned and handled after they are picked. He said the company would most likely require that suppliers test melons for pathogens before shipping them to Costco.

He called on the industry to finance research into the best way to wash or clean cantaloupes to remove contaminants.

Dr. Margaret Hamburg, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said that investigators had yet to determine how the melons became contaminated.

Trevor V. Suslow, an extension specialist at the University of California, Davis, who has done industry-financed research into food safety and cantaloupes, said that the fruit’s rough skin made it more susceptible to harboring unwanted bacteria.

“You have these tremendous hiding places, if you will, nooks and crannies, lots of areas for microbes to get in and attach and hide,” Dr. Suslow said.
It is best to keep cantaloupes dry to reduce the possibility that bacteria will grow on them, he said. In California, growers typically do not immerse melons in water to wash them and use chilled air to cool them.

In other regions, he said, cantaloupes are often washed in a large tank or with a water spray and are cooled with sprays of cold water as well. Those techniques may be more likely to spread bacteria.

Stephen F. Patricio, a melon shipper who is the chairman of the California Cantaloupe Advisory Board, a trade group, said that sales were plummeting, even though only melons from the farm in Colorado were implicated.

“The entire melon category needs to look at the best practices and research that’s been done by the California industry and others to best analyze their own risks,” Mr. Patricio said. “Or we’re all going to continue to suffer.”

 I got up at 2 a.m. Friday for a 3 a.m. chat session after a video presentation about social media and food safety at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's 15th annual PulseNet Update Meeting/seventh annual OutbreakNet Conference in Long Beach, Calif., only to be told the gene jockeys and epidemiologists had broken the Internet and couldn’t get a phone line.

No worries, instead I chatted in hushed tones (trying not to wake the family) with JoNel Aleccia of msnbc about listeria and cantaloupe.

Cantaloupe is particularly susceptible to contamination, ranking among the top five kinds of commonly tainted produce, along with spinach, lettuce, tomatoes and green onions, said Doug Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University and publisher of a food safety blog.

“What makes cantaloupe stand out is a couple of things. There’s the structure of the fruit. Think about a honeydew melon. They’ve smooth and very hard. Cantaloupe is very soft,” Powell told msnbc.com.

With its bumpy rind and succulent flesh, cantaloupe can easily become tainted at any point from field to table, Powell said. Bacteria on the skin are hard to remove, and they can be spread to the edible portion of the melon when a knife slices through. There’s some evidence that the porous skin might actually allow tainted water to permeate the flesh, he added.

It’s not yet clear how the Jensen Farms cantaloupes were contaminated. FDA officials have found listeria in lab samples taken from equipment and fruit at the farm’s packing facility. But the bacteria can be present in soil or water, so the root cause has not yet been determined, said Doug Karas, a spokesman.

Powell also said many outbreaks are confirmed only through interviews with ill people that reveal a common food source.. In the case of the new listeria outbreak, a health warning and recall was issued a week before experts actually detected the bacteria, possibly halting more infections and death.

“Can you imagine the outcry if Colorado had waited an extra week to go public in the current outbreak?”

South Carolina health types advised people who purchased barbeque at a fundraiser at York’s Grace Covenant Church fundraiser on Sept. 16 and 17 to throw the food away.

“The food from this event shouldn’t be eaten by any people or animals,” said Gil Potter, M.D., medical director of the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Region 3 public health office, which includes York County. “We’ve received reports of more than 40 people who became ill after eating food purchased at the church. More than 300 plates of food were sold, and many people bought barbeque in bulk for freezing and later use.”

According to Potter, all of the people who became ill are reporting the same symptoms, mainly vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps.

“Tests are under way to identify the cause of the illness and we’ll continue to investigate this situation,” Potter said. “While not conclusive, this fundraiser is one thing in common among the people who got sick. As a precaution, we are advising everyone to immediately discard any food purchased at this fundraiser.”

Pepperidge Farm, Incorporated is voluntarily recalling a limited quantity of 10.2-ounce boxes of Baked Naturals Sesame Sticks as a precaution due to the possible presence of small, thin pieces of wire.

A small number of consumers have reported minor scrapes in and around the mouth. Pepperidge Farm issued the voluntary recall out of an abundance of caution to ensure the safety of consumers.

The affected product is marked with a yellow 20% More! banner across the top of the package and has the following codes on the top package flap:

W07*1781 Sell by 11/20/2011
W07*1891 Sell by 11/27/2011
W07*1921 Sell by 12/4/2011
W07*2041 Sell by 12/11/2011
W07*2061 Sell by 12/13/2011
W07*2221 Sell by 1/1/2012.

Approximately 13,000 cases of the affected products were shipped to customers across the United States. The product is not distributed in Canada.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) has received word that the five isolates sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control match the multistate listeria-in-cantaloupe outbreak.

Rocky Ford cantaloupes from Jensen Farms were distributed in Kansas and several other states.

Kansas has eight cases of listeriosis reported since Aug. 26, with 5 cases now matching the multistate outbreak. Two of these eight patients have died and the causes of death are being investigated.

So much for the cold-chain.

13 Investigates – the voice of Indiana – found beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, and produce being transported in hot trucks that do not have proper refrigeration.

"If it's happening here in Indiana," it's happening in Texas and North Carolina and California," said Capt. Wayne Andrews, who oversees Indiana State Police's Motor Carrier Enforcement Division. "This is not just an Indiana problem and we need to do more to address it."

"It's just not working properly and it had approximately a 94.7 degree reading at the time of the traffic stop," explained ISP Trooper Ashley Hart, standing next to a hot truck she pulled over along Interstate 65 near Lafayette. The truck was carrying raw meat, eggs and produce from a warehouse in Chicago to restaurants in Indianapolis.

"It's absolutely disgusting," she added.

13 Investigates first exposed the problem in July as state police partnered with local health departments to keep spoiled food from hot trucks off Hoosier dinner plates. Since then, the danger has not gone away.

"The problem is growing," said Andrews, whose motor carrier inspectors have found more hot trucks than they ever expected.

Last week, on a 92-degree day, state police stopped a food truck heading northbound on Interstate 69 near Muncie. The truck's refrigeration unit was broken and inside, eggs, pork, shrimp, and fish were found to be 66 degrees. Food safety inspectors from the Delaware County Health Department say that is both dangerous and illegal.

Indiana's effort to crack down on hot trucks is about to get some national exposure. After seeing WTHR's investigation, NBC's TODAY Show has decided to highlight this problem as a national issue. TODAY sent a crew to Indiana last week and will feature a special report on hot trucks September 22 -- this Thursday morning. You can see the report on Channel 13.

 As a Canadian citizen with permanent U.S. residency living in Australia, I get confused.

Even with a language professor by my side, I can barely understand a damn word anyone says – especially the Canadians.

Fellow Queenslander Pat Dignam also appears confused when he writes in the Irish Times that food irradiation “is routine in some countries, including the U.S., so eating rare hamburgers there is safe.”

No. A small fraction of American ground beef is irradiated, and almost none of that is available at retail or food service.

Mr. Dignam is correct when he says, “During the butchering process, the surface of cuts of meat may become contaminated with bacteria, notably E. coli, from the intestines of the animal (regardless of the standards applied by the farmer and butcher). Cooking an intact piece of meat on the surface is sufficient to kill any such bacteria. However, when a piece of meat is minced, contamination on the surface can be spread to any part of the product. … Irish mince is not irradiated, so the process of cooking through is crucial. E. coli infection can be fatal, so anyone who wishes to eat rare or raw minced beef in Ireland should take note of these facts.”

Well said, except for the U.S. bit. And things get confusing when intact cuts like steaks are needle-tenderized.

The facts are ground beef in the U.S. needs to be cooked to 160F (71C) as verified by a tip-sensitive digital thermometer.

Stick it in.

Continuing with all things melon, did Del Monte cantaloupes, imported from a farm in Guatemala, sicken at least 20 people in 10 states with Salmonella Panama beginning in Feb. 2011?

Or was the link a result of zealous health types in Oregon and at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?

William Neuman of the N.Y. Times writes a lawsuit filed by Del Monte Fresh Produce against FDA is being cheered by many in the produce industry, who often complain about what they call overreaching by regulators and welcome a company with resources pushing back.

Aside from suing the F.D.A., the company has threatened legal action against a leading state food-borne disease investigator in Oregon, where the Del Monte cantaloupes were identified as the cause of the salmonella outbreak. And it has challenged some of the basic techniques of food safety investigations, like relying on ill people’s memories of what they ate when microbiological testing does not find pathogens on food.

Dennis Christou, vice president of marketing for Del Monte Fresh Produce, which is based in Coral Gables, Fla., said, “It’s got to be a comprehensive and reliable investigation, and in our opinion this was neither. There’s absolutely no basis in the claim that this was done intentionally to intimidate or bully anyone.”

The company said Wednesday that it was in talks with the F.D.A. to resolve the dispute and expected an agreement soon.

When the outbreak was emerging, epidemiologists used data from Costco membership cards and found that the melons came from one farm in Guatemala, called Asunción Mita, owned by Del Monte Fresh Produce.

The investigators, working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA asked Del Monte Fresh Produce for a recall, following the usual procedure. The company at first resisted but, according to its lawsuit, eventually agreed to a limited recall to prevent the FDA from issuing a broad warning about contaminated melons that could have affected the entire cantaloupe market. The recall was announced on March 22.

But in mid-July the FDA issued an import alert, saying that the conditions that caused the contamination might still exist on the Asunción Mita farm. The alert allowed inspectors to stop cantaloupes grown on the farm from entering this country.

Del Monte Fresh Produce fired back, filing its lawsuit and accusing federal and state inspectors of conducting a slipshod investigation. And it questioned the validity of the results because investigators had not found a cantaloupe contaminated with the bacteria that had made people sick.

The company’s filings include an audit report of the Guatemala farm, submitted to the FDA last month, which raises questions about the company’s practices.

The audit, done by a company hired by Del Monte Fresh Produce, found that a pipe containing raw sewage and wastewater emptied into an open ditch about 110 yards from the farm’s packing house. The ditch led into a lagoon containing additional sewage, more than 220 yards from the packing house. The audit recommended that the ditch be eliminated.

Mr. Christou said the ditch was protected by barbed wire to keep large animals from tracking the waste into fields. He said the lagoon contained chemicals to speed decomposition of the waste and was away from fields and wells. After the audit, he said, the company extended the pipe all the way to the lagoon and discontinued use of the open ditch.

Asked if having raw sewage in an open ditch near its packing house was consistent with high food safety standards, Mr. Christou said that tests on melons had found no pathogens.

Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said, “There’s no doubt the data are very tight. Del Monte caused that outbreak.”

And he said that many investigations involving sickness from produce did not find contaminated food because by the time officials became aware of the outbreak, the tainted produce had been eaten or discarded.

A table of cantaloupe- (or rock melon) related outbreaks is available at http://bites.ksu.edu/cantaloupe-related-outbreaks.

 The E. coli O104 outbreak that killed 53 people and sickened over 4,000, primarily in Germany, was apparently caused by – nothing.

While strong epidemiological evidence pointed to raw sprouts grown from fenugreek seeds imported from Egypt and distributed anywhere and everywhere, a European fact-finding commission has, at least according to this story, cleared Egyptian fenugreek seeds as the source.

All tests conducted by a technical team sent by the European Union and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to Egypt last month to probe allegations on the presence of highly-toxic E. coli bacteria in Egyptian fenugreek seed have turned up negative, said Salah Mu`awad, the chief of the Egyptian Agriculture Ministry services and follow up division.

The EU had banned the entry of Egyptian grains after suspecting a batch of Egyptian fenugreek seeds was the source of the E. coli outbreak in Spain and Germany in May.

Egypt has since been repeatedly calling for lifting the ban, saying that its fenugreek imports to Europe do not carry the E.coli microbe and promising to fully cooperate with the EU in investigating the real cause of the outbreak.